The earth does appear fine tuned for human existence. Any number of changes, and we could not have come to be, nor could we continue to exist. If gravity were off, if earth were closer or farther from the sun, life could not exist on earth.
The question is asked, what are the odds of that? What are the odds of the earth randomly being fined tuned for human existence?
Dawkins has an answer, which is commonly known as the anthropic principle.
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Two main explanations have been offered for our planet’s peculiar friendliness to life.
The design theory says that God made the world, placed it in the Goldilocks zone, and deliberately set up all the details for our benefit.
The anthropic approach is very different, and it has a faintly Darwinian feel. The great majority of planets in the universe are not in the Goldilocks zones of their respective stars, and not suitable for life.
However small the minority of planets with just the right condition for life may be, we necessarily have to be on one of that minority, because here we are thinking about it.
What he is saying is, forget the odds, we are here, so the odds had to be good, and not at all improbable.
Well, if it's not improbable, then life should be happening on other planets as well. The fact that life does not occur on other planets speaks to the improbability of it.
But Dawkins has a ready answer. He says, if even a tiny fraction of planets have life on them, then multiply that fraction by the number of planets, and voila, we get billions of alien-infested planets:
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If the odds of life originating spontaneously on a planet were a billion to one against, nevertheless that stupefyingly improbable event would still happen on a billion planets.
I do not for a moment believe the origin of life was anywhere near so improbable in practice. I think it is definitely worth spending money on trying to duplicate the event in the lab and – by the same token, on SETI, because I think it is likely that there is intelligent life elsewhere.
He goes on to theorize that the aliens are much more intelligent than humans, and even "god like" (his words).
The fact that we don't know of a single alien-infested planet doesn't occur to him.
The earth does appear fine tuned for human existence. Any number of changes, and we could not have come to be, nor could we continue to exist. If gravity were off, if earth were closer or farther from the sun, life could not exist on earth.
The question is asked, what are the odds of that? What are the odds of the earth randomly being fined tuned for human existence?
If you roll a thousand-sided die and it came up with the number 325, you could imply a similar thing about 325. There is no special odds factor, it just happened that way. In other words, if there are 100 trillion planets, those that have intelligent life forms can ask that same question.
Just like a specialized snail in the desert that is hermaphrodite until it rains once a decade or two bringing moisture and bacteria, where some sproud male genetalia and some female, so they can mix up the genes and have a more diverse offspring to fight off the bacteria. That increases the changes some will survive obviously. Then they go back. What are the odds of a species like that existing in the Universe? That question makes the situation seem more impressive than it really is. When something adapts over time to custom and fit into a niche or environement, you can always say "wow, if one thing was different, that would not exist."
There would just be something else, then people could get just as impressed over that, speaking of incredible odds.
If you roll a thousand-sided die and it came up with the number 325, you could imply a similar thing about 325. There is no special odds factor, it just happened that way. In other words, if there are 100 trillion planets, those that have intelligent life forms can ask that same question.
I think you're missing the point. The question was not "what are the odds of any number coming up, when the odds are the same for any other number on that dice".
The question the anthropic principle attempts to answer is why the earth is alone in being fine tuned for intelligent life.
You have a few choices.
You can say, "it isn't fine tuned any more than any other planet", in which case plentiful science is available to prove you wrong.
You can say "it's fined tuned by God, because the Bible tells me so", in which case you've left science behind and moved on to theology or something else.
You can say "it's fine tuned only retrospectively because humans are the ones that are fine tuned to earth, not earth to humans", in which case we would expect to see other life forms on other planets adapted to non-earthly conditions.
Anyway around it, the earth is fine tuned to humanity. Pretty much nobody denies that. Dawkins doesn't deny it; he simply accounts for it by saying that is isn't improbable and life forms exist on other planets that we don't know about.
Anyway around it, the earth is fine tuned to humanity.
It's the other way around. Humans, and all other species, are fine-tuned to Earth and their particular niche. Earth is their umbrella niche, is all. What you just said implies purpose or intelligent design, and there is no evidence of that. What there is evidence of, however, is that humans and all the other species are fine-tuned to their environement as a natural result of adaptation and evolution.
It's the other way around. Humans, and all other species, are fine-tuned to Earth and their particular niche. Earth is their umbrella niche, is all. What you just said implies purpose or intelligent design, and there is no evidence of that. What there is evidence of, however, is that humans and all the other species are fine-tuned to their environement as a natural result of adaptation and evolution.
Fine tuning doesn't imply design. Just because a frozen piece of ice is fine tuned to fit in the hole that it was taken from doesn't mean that an intelligent being designed the ice.
Did you read before posting? I did elaborate on the very position that you espouse:
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Originally Posted by John Scott
You can say "it's fine tuned only retrospectively because humans are the ones that are fine tuned to earth, not earth to humans", in which case we would expect to see other life forms on other planets adapted to non-earthly conditions.
So all we have to do now is find those other planets with other aliens.
Oh, there aren't any?
The we have our answer. The earth is indeed highly fined tuned for human existence. The probability is what? Billions to one? Wow.
Of course, intelligent life could be on other planets. We just haven't found any yet.
...
The question the anthropic principle attempts to answer is why the earth is alone in being fine tuned for intelligent life.
...
Cosmologically speaking we have barely been able to examine our left arm pit so far. Within a decade or two we will be able to say if other planets capable of supporting life exist.
There are billions of stars, perhaps each with their own planetary systems within our galaxy alone. Considering the billions of galaxies spread over the the 13 billions of years of our Universe's existence so far, I would say that life has not and is not restricted to this little blue green planet alone. But that is yet to be proven, admittedly.
The discussion gets interesting when another planet with life on it is discovered.
__________________
I'm not selling this space for all the doughnuts in Doughnutopia.
The discussion gets interesting when another planet with life on it is discovered.
Actually, the discussion gets interesting when you look at all the factors required for complex life. The odds of getting all those factors together on a planet are, excuse the pun, astronomical.
This video says it's one-one thousandth of 1,000,000,000,000,000.
That's one in one million billions.
There are billions of galaxies each will billions of stars. For simplicity let us say one billion galaxies each with a billion stars. By that video's own figures with my astronomically low estimation, that means there are at least 1000 planets with intelligent life on them in our Universe alone.
__________________
I'm not selling this space for all the doughnuts in Doughnutopia.
There are billions of galaxies each will billions of stars. For simplicity let us say one billion galaxies each with a billion stars. By that video's own figures with my astronomically low estimation, that means there are at least 1000 planets with intelligent life on them in our Universe alone.
You are taking odds - conservative odds at that - to establish a positive claim. Which of course fails, because odds do not establish positive claims. They only speak to probabilities.
When something is that astronomically improbable, the only thing that is established is that it is improbable.
Take for example the argument you just offered, that the odds of "life friendly" planets allow several billion planets, at least,, to be life friendly.
You then went an stated that they have life.
You see the mistake? I have several wallets that are could be considered friendly to $1 billion checks. But that doesn't mean that a single one of them will ever have a $1 billion check in them.
The most hilarious thing is, that this is an argument offered by atheists. Atheists, who say they won't believe in God until they see one, jump up and down and pee their pants at the suggestion that somebody refuses to believe in alien life until they see proof of it.
There are billions of galaxies each will billions of stars. For simplicity let us say one billion galaxies each with a billion stars. By that video's own figures with my astronomically low estimation, that means there are at least 1000 planets with intelligent life on them in our Universe alone.
Good catch, Sita.
John,
1,000,000,000,000,000 equates to one thousandth of a trillionth.
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Originally Posted by John Scott
This video says it's one-one thousandth of 1,000,000,000,000,000. ...
My silly maths was just to illustrate that when talking about the Universe, very small numbers, when you take a closer look at them, amount to a lot more than you think.
If there were only two planets in our entire Universe with intelligent life, does that mean some one fine tuned two planets for life.
What if there were three or four ... At what point does the Universe itself become finely tuned for life.
The chances are that there are many life sustaining planets in our galaxy alone.
Keith Horne, Professor of Astronomy at St Andrews University, said: "Here we have a system where the two largest planets are similar to the two largest in our own system.
"This is something of a surprise. It may indicate that planetary systems like our own are relatively common.
"Once we know that planets similar to Earth are common, it is straightforward to go ahead on finding them and investigating whether these harbour any forms of life."
I wonder what the odds would be if they didn't use a conservative one-in-ten for all the basic odds, when some factors are in themselves much more improbable than one in ten. The result could very well be even more into the arena of probabilistic impossibility than it already is.
